Dungeons & Dudes

Chapter 1

I had to go outside for a smoke, fuck what Mr MacDowell said about taking breaks while we had customers. I just couldn't deal with the sheep that get fed into this place. "Do you guys have the latest Batman?" No shit we do genius, this is a comic book store isn't it? I can get you Batman: Shadow of the Bat from the back in a heartbeat, near mint condition too but I doubt you even know the series, iconic as it may be.

I stood outside with my eyes closed staring into the darkness of my own eyelids trying to collect my thoughts, pulling deeply on my cigarette and contemplating why I still do this shit. Oh yeah I need to eat, that's right. I opened my eyes and looked around at the squalor in which I stood, overflowing dumpster with the smell of a rotting corpse to my right? Check. Filthy gutter water under my boots? Check. A sense of being murdered in this alley like some sort of bad comic book cliché? (Here's looking at you batsy). Check.

I took another drag from my cigarette; the smoke filled my lungs in a sharp yet soothing way. I decided to try hold this one in, just to see what would happen. I coughed like the idiot I am.

"Genius move as ever Littlemen." came the voice to my left. Without opening my eyes I knew exactly who it was.

"Real funny there guy"

Mike fished the smokes out of my shirt pocket and helped himself to one.

"You ever think of buying your own?" I asked him.

"Sure, just pay me back for all those clubs and I'll do just that." He cockily replied.

Shit well he had me there, stupid rich bastard. See Mikey here has a substantial allowance given to him by his sickeningly rich father which he receives with the blind trust that only a fooled man can bestow upon his darling baby boy to spend on "wise purchases that will be the benefit of your future and serve to make me proud." We use this money to get wasted at the clubs.

"Yeah, yeah just shut up and take one" I told him.

He put his back on the wall and kicked his legs out in front of him; damn he knew how to make anything look comfortable. Not wanting to leave the poor guy on his own I leaned back too and placed my back on the wall to his right.

"What the fu-‽" I could feel the jarring ice cold wetness of the wall the moment my back made contact with it. "That's so nasty man, why the hell didn't you tell me it was wet?" I said as I craned my neck to look at my back, the thin white uniform shirt that I had been wearing untucked (much to MacDowell's frustration and my joy) now had a lovely greasy oil stain on the back.

"To get that reaction right there bitch!" Mike said in between snorting laughter.

"Douche." Came my stunning reply. "Just shut up and hand me your jacket before MacDowell sees this."

He took his uniform jacket off and handed it to me, an ugly red thing with the comic book stores name on the back "H.O.T - Nerd" okay so Home Of The Nerd isn't a bad name but like damn MacDowell don't you know anything about fashion?

"So why you rebelling against The Man today?" he asked me with a smirk.

"Sheeple man, freaking sheeple. Seriously every day we get the same questions, 'do you have the latest Flash' or 'Do you think my collection of Spawn comics is worth a lot?' Seriously these, these... troglodytes just never stop! You know sometimes I lie and tell them it's worth a small fortune just so they won't pester me with questions about why it's worth pretty much the same if not less than what they bought it for originally or that I have to be an idiot not to recognize their true value. I just can't deal with that bullshit sometimes man, what am I supposed to do here hmm? I have a shitty job with shitty pay, I don't have a girlfriend and the last time I tried to get one she turned out to be a lesbian, I'm going nowhere in life dude. All I have in life is my writing but where is that gonna take me? The written word is dying my friend and so is my future" I spat the last words out with a bitterness that had become more frequently used lately than ever before, but that was always the beauty of being friends with Mike, he always had the perfect response to any of my rants.